The Bic Picture Competition: What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

By Mike Brownlow

Last month I had the pleasure of being invited to be a judge in the annual competition run by BIC -- the BIC PICTURE -- to find talented young artists amongst Britain's primary school children. My fellow judges were children's TV presenter Kirsten O'Brien, and colour expert Cecile Parenton, who heads the children's division of BIC. The winners have just been announced.
The theme was 'What I want to be when I grow up,' and the ambitions of the nation's children ranged from becoming a mad scientist to a roller coaster designer. If this small sample is representative, there'll be lots of footballers, astronauts, dress designers and chefs around in the future! 

It's not as easy as you might imagine, picking winning pictures from a room full of shortlisted entrants, and there were several good-humored arguments along the way. We had some really delightful designs to sort through though, and choosing an overall winner was especially difficult. Well done to all who took part. Congratulations to all the age group winners, and especially to Laura Burton who won the main prize. Laura wants to be a children's book writer and illustrator, and with her winning picture she's made an impressive start.

I've pictured a few of my favorites here, but this is a link to the BIC Kids website, which gives more information: http://www.bickids.com/index.php?p_sa=actualite&p_actu=1 and to the Flickr site which shows more of the winning entrants: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thebicpicture.







2 comments:

  1. Well judged Mike, some budding children's illustrators there! I've not heard of this competition before, my daughter is 8 and would have loved to participate had we known about it. Maybe next year though!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's only the second year it's been running and I get the impression that it's still building. Lots of entries from Wales for some reason! Good fun though.

    ReplyDelete

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